


mono no aware

by drinkofwourder



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Android Brian, Angst, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Soft Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-22 18:50:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19970824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkofwourder/pseuds/drinkofwourder
Summary: a transient gentle sadnessor the water and patrick are both moving, while brian stands entirely still.





	mono no aware

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this definitely isn't my standard Bon Appétit Brad/Claire fic. But the idea of this au wouldn't leave my head. This is based on the world surrounding Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, which is a very beautiful manga in which an android runs a cafe in a very soft post apocalyptic world.
> 
> So I wrote angst fic based on it. The title is based on the Japanese term for the general feeling of YKK.
> 
> I hope you like it! I got inspired by a lot of the great fics in this fandom, so I hope you all enjoy my offerings!

There was a young man sitting in his cafe, Brian poured him coffee and asked him questions like he always did, questions that the young man won’t answer. But Brian sat near him and answered his own questions, the only person in the cafe, the only customer he might have for a few days.

The young man, Brian wasn’t too good with the ages of humans, but he had to have been in his late teens or early twenties, and he wore a sour face like he was much older. But he sat and endured Brian’s endless, excited chatter. 

Brian made himself a cup of coffee, poured the man another without asking. He knew nothing about him but he wanted to keep him around for a little while longer, hoping to know something about him eventually.

The man finished his second cup of coffee and finally looked at Brian, that sour look that Brian would come to know as something softer still on his face.

“Patrick Gill.”  
“Hm?”  
“That’s my name.”

And then he was throwing some dollars onto the table and hiking out the front door, Brian too stunned to follow him out.

He’d eventually learn more about Patrick, learned that he was from New York City at some point, had grown up in another place that had been overtaken by the water. He learned that he was a scout, walking and reporting how much the water rose, that he was in his early twenties. 

Of course, Brian learned this from other guests that had come through his door, a cheerful woman named Simone who was louder than any human being had any right to be. Brian liked her instantly, had met her for the first time when she was just as loud at six years old, ordering hot chocolate with her parents and asking for extra whipped cream. She had asked questions that made her parents look embarrassed but had delighted Brian, he watched her grow up as he stood entirely still. 

Simone leaned over the counter and gossiped freely about the man that they both knew nothing about, Patrick Gill, and Brian knew that he wanted to know him further, a terrible thing to think about someone.

Especially when it took a year for him to come back in from the waterfront, reporting new numbers. The shore had moved in three feet from when he had last been there, they had less time than they thought originally, fifty years instead of seventy. 

He reported it to Brian over the same chipped mug, a sour look on his face. Brian smiled regardless, thanking him for the dangerous job he had and sitting with him. Pat was a little more talkative on that day, smiling even as he talked about the cat that he had seen outside among the community garden. 

Brian told him that he wasn’t too concerned about the water, that he’d live regardless. Eventually, he might have to live on a boat, but he’d adapt and perhaps open a boat cafe. Patrick had scoffed at that, hiding his face in his coffee. 

“You’re planning on living forever?”  
“I don’t...I don’t really have a choice, Patrick.” Brian said, voice soft, confused.

Patrick looked taken aback by that, setting his mug down and sloshing coffee over the side onto his fingers. Brian watched him lap up the hot liquid with interest, interest that had him flushing.

“Shit. Uh, sorry.”  
“It’s okay.”  
“I just can’t imagine that.”

For the first time, Brian really thought about it. It made tears well up in his eyes, and he fought to blink them back, cursing his creator for making him able to feel sorrow.

Patrick was older the next time Brian saw him, hair growing out to his chin length. The summer was almost unbearably hot, and Brian helped him tie it up out of his way, trying not to notice the lines that had deepened in his too-human skin. Patrick blushed and smiled at him, thanking him and ordering an iced coffee.

“People used to drink iced coffee even through the winter where I was from.”  
“New York?”  
“No, Maine.”

Brian nodded like he knew what Patrick was talking about, only knowing what they had lost from his information banks. He thought it might be important to Pat, and he wondered what he had lost. What his life used to be like in that cold, snowy place he talked about, if the summers were hot like they were in the new world they lived in or if it was cold year round.

He lost himself in his thoughts, pulling himself out of them when he felt Patrick’s hand covering his, sliding over it. Brian looked at him and smiled.

One day, he will lose Patrick just like he will eventually lose everything. But those days were long, an eternal summer, and he knew that they had time. So, when Patrick kissed him, he kissed back, holding onto him because he was something worth holding onto. 

Brian wondered if Pat thought of him when he was on the road alone, measuring the coastline. Did he dream of an android who couldn’t dream himself, not even of electric sheep or how many coffee beans he’d need to buy. They looked the same but they weren’t, they were just ships passing by on the ever-growing sea.

There was so much he could say to Pat. Instead, he kissed him once more and pulled back.

“Stay the night.” He whispered in his space.  
“Okay.”

Later, as they tangled their bare legs together in Brian’s bed, Pat turned his face into Brian’s neck and whispered curses into the skin there.

“Forty years now.”  
“I know.”  
“I won’t live to see it.”  
“I-I. I know. God, Pat Gill, I know.”

Patrick Gill was getting older, getting grayer and more tired. But he still came to see Brian, smile youthful on his face. He listened to Brian play the ukulele and talk about the siblings he didn’t know he had, other models built by the same creator, Laura and Jonah. They went to bed together and it was like it had been the first time, and Brian missed him when he was gone.

But he always went, trips getting shorter and shorter as the years went on. He talked about the coast like it was an old friend, like it was an old enemy, moving just as everyone else he knew was moving, while Brian stayed the same in his old cafe that also stayed the same.

He saw that same young man, sitting dour in his cafe, saw him exactly the same way throughout. Brian thought that he might’ve always loved him, from the very first time he saw him. God, he loved him, he loved him, he loved him. 

But he couldn’t love him because the time was moving way too fucking quickly, like a curse.

Eventually, there was water licking at the front of his door, splashing up over the threshold, and Brian knew that he’d have to move within the week. But he had a guest, an old man who smiled the same way that Brian had seen hundreds of times, holding his hands in his wrinkled ones, like he knew it was going to be the last time. 

And Brian held on tighter than he did before. Because he didn’t want to let go, because letting go would mean that everything was over as he knew it, and his life would go on without end.

“Pat, I…”

And Patrick looked at him, smiling softer than he had ever seen before.

“Brian. I know.”

Outside, the water splashed on, playing its endless song like the one that Brian would have to play. Until it was only him, until every human he knew would be gone, the reality that he didn’t want to face, the one he was being forced to face.

And inside his cafe, he saw Patrick Gill for the last time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it! Also I'm really sorry for killing Pat there at the end.
> 
> Comments are moderated, so lemme know if you don't want me to post your comment.


End file.
